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Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria, West Africa
Elphinstone Dayrell (1869 - 1917)

A collection of folk stories and fairy tales from Southern Nigeria gathered by Elphinstone Dayrell, deputy commissioner of the region when the book was published. - Summary by Elsie Selwyn

Genre(s): Culture & Heritage Fiction, Myths, Legends & Fairy Tales, Nature & Animal Fiction

Language: English

Jewish Fairy Tales and Fables
Gertrude Landa (1892 - 1941)

Gertrude Landa or rather, Hannah Gittel (Annie Gertrude) Landa nee Gordon wrote under the pen-name of Aunt Naomi. The stories that she relates in this book are mostly based on parables from the Talmud and the Midrash, those compilations of ancient teachings, interpretations and learning which in importance are second only to the Bible (Old Testament) in Jewish religious tradition. - Summary by Noel Badrian

Genre(s): Myths, Legends & Fairy Tales

Welsh Fairy Tales
William Elliot Griffis (1843 - 1928)

This is a collection of delightful tales that explore the uniqueness of the Welsh people, Welsh heroes, Welsh countryside, Welsh animals and Welsh pride. Some other minor peoples are mentioned in passing (the English, The Scots, etc.) but mainly these stories embody the exuberant pride and joy in living of the Welsh people as well as their wry humor. Most stories are fairly short and would make a wonderful listening episode for anyone.. - Summary by Phil chenevert

Genre(s): Myths, Legends & Fairy Tales

Fairy Tales from South Africa
Mrs. E.J. Bourhill

The stories in this collection come from the oral traditions of the people from Swaziland, Matabeleland (Ndebele people) and Zululand in South Africa. The authors, Mrs. E. J. Bourhill and Mrs. J. B. Drake, or more properly the collectors and editors of the stories assert that: "All the stories in this book are real Fairy Tales, just as much as Jack the Giant-killer or The Sleeping Beauty. By this I mean that they are traditional, handed down by word of mouth. Nobody knows how old they are, or who told them first." The stories are full of witches and magicians and monsters, as well as heroes and princesses and good and bad rulers. They have done a marvellous job of putting these stories into English but admit that there is much lost in the translation and in not being able to see the storyteller who would not only tell the story but act it out while doing so. Mrs. Bourhill and Mrs. Drake were concerned that, as the way of life and the customs of the people were slowly changing, these wonderful traditional stories might fade away. They thus decided to write them down for posterity. - Summary by Noel Badrian

Genre(s): Myths, Legends & Fairy Tales

Language: English


Maoriland Fairy Tales
Edith Howes (1872 - 1954)

Most of the tales have some basis in history. It is an oral language so all histories have to be remembered and retold. To help with this memory retelling the carvings all have relative information and prompts, stories of Atua (sort of gods) and other people (pakeha) that have been encountered are all blended into the stories.

One of the amazing things to listen to is a person's whakapapa (family line). My son's father can tell his whakapapa right back to first landing in the canoe Aotea. It takes hours with the stories of battles, moving and resettling and then the invasion of British soldiers and settlers. Those pale fairies in one of the recent stories would most probably have been Malaysian or Portugese fishermen/explorers.

The Tikanga (way to behave/live) is quite strict and the stories support keeping people in line. This strictness is a kind of policing I think because it doesn't matter what time in history or what country, human nature doesn't change. There are greedy, silly, great and strong leaders and followers throughout time.

A Taniwha is often found in a tapu (sacred or restricted place) That might be a dangerous bend in a river, a place where currents catch people and drag the out to sea or a place in the forest that is sacred so the elders don't want people wandering around in there. There taniwha could be from a spirit of someone or put there by the Atua as a guardian. A taniwha can also be friendly it depends on the place and it's history.

It is interesting to think about the origins and reasons behind these stories. Some like Hatupatu are based on fact but also retold to tell people about abuse of power and underestimating people. Maori are great strategists. If you can find the DVDs 'The Maori Wars' you will see the difficulty the British had when trying to beat these mighty warriors. Tha'ts why they finally had to sign the Waitangi Treaty (as ambiguous as it is) because they just couldn't beat them. (Summary by mareab)

Genre(s): Children's Fiction, Myths, Legends & Fairy Tales


Outa Karel’s Stories: South African Folk-Lore Tales
Sanni Metelerkamp (1867 - 1945)

Sanni Metelerkamp was a South African playwright and author born in 1867. She is well known for her biography of her great-grandfather, George Rex, the British born entrepreneur who founded the town of Knysna and was rumoured to have been an illegitimate son of King George III. Possibly her greatest legacy however is the publication of a collection of folk tales which in her own words "… are the common property of every country child in South Africa." By the time she published "Outa Karel’s Stories: South African Folk-Lore Tales" in 1914, South Africa had come through a time of great turmoil. There had been years of conflict between the Boer settlers, the Zulus and the British. The arrival of peoples from all over the world seeking gold and diamonds together with the advent of the railroads, was opening up the country and changing society. Sanni was afraid that many of the old traditions and stories would be lost and so set down these few for posterity. She also stated " I greatly regret that (the stories) appear here in what is, to them, a foreign tongue. No one who has not heard them in the Taal - that quaint, expressive language of the people - can have any idea of what they lose through translation, but, having been written in the first instance for English publications, the original medium was out of the question." However, even The Taal (which in South Africa refers to Afrikaans) would not have been the language from whence these tales originated. They came from the oral traditions of the indigenous peoples of South Africa . The storyteller is Outa Karel, an old family retainer and though they are told here in English, there are several words and expressions in the "Taal". There is however an excellent Glossary at the beginning of the book which is read as a separate file for reference. ( Noel Badrian)

Genre(s): Myths, Legends & Fairy Tales, Animals & Nature

Language: English

Korean Folk Tales
Im Bang (1640 - ca. 1722) and Yi Riuk

"To any one who would like to look somewhat into the inner soul of the Oriental, and see the peculiar spiritual existences among which he lives, the following stories will serve as true interpreters, born as they are of the three great religions of the Far East, Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism." Manuscripts by two of Korea's (possibly) most famous authors, dating from the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were uncovered in the early years of the twentieth century. Translation revealed stories that are not for the faint-hearted: gruesome, harsh, unlovely, depicting scenes of the day, as well as the hope for better things. - Summary by Lynne Thompson

Genre(s): Short Stories

Language: English

Aino Folk-Tales
Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850 - 1935)

Not for the squeamish or for children, these folk-tales are from the Ainu, the somewhat mysterious indigenous people of Japan, thousands of whom still live in the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. Ranging over all of the usual themes of folklore, from creation to marriage to war, these stories have a pungent, ribald frankness concerning all aspects of human life that offended their scholarly collector Basil Hall Chamberlain (his apologies to the reader are themselves entertaining) but that make them fresh, provocative, and amusing to the twenty-first century reader. Attention to the Ainu is especially timely because of the revival in Japan of Ainu activism on behalf of indigenous rights, pride, and culture, but are well worth reading for their purely entertainment value.

Genre(s): Myths, Legends & Fairy Tales

Russian Fairy Tales
Peter Nikolaevich Polevoi (1839 - 1902)
Translated by Robert Nisbet Bain (1854 - 1909)

The existence of the Russian Skazki or Märchen was first made generally known to the British public by Mr W. R. S. Ralston in his “Russian Folk-Tales.” That excellent and most engrossing volume was, primarily, a treatise on Slavonic folk-lore, illustrated with admirable skill and judgment by stories, mainly selected from the vast collection of Afanasiev, who did for the Russian what Asbjörnsen has done for the Norwegian folk-tale. A year after the appearance of Mr Ralston's book, the eminent Russian historian and archaeologist, Peter Nikolaevich Polevoi (well known, too, as an able and ardent Shakespearean scholar), selected from the inexhaustible stores of Afanasiev some three dozen of the Skazki, and worked them up into a fairy-tale book which was published at St Petersburg in 1874, under the title of “Narodnuiya Russkiya Skazki” (“Popular Russian Tales”). M. Polevoi did his work excellently well, and, while softening the crudities and smoothing out the occasional roughness of these charming stories, neither injured their simple texture nor overlaid the original pattern. It is from the first Russian edition of M. Polevoi's book that the following selection has been made. With the single exception of Morozko, a variant of which will be familiar to those who know Mr Ralston's volume, none of these tales had seen the light in an English dress before the publication of the first edition of my book; for though both Ralston and Polevoi drew, for the most part, from the same copious stock, their purposes were so different that their selections naturally proved to be different also. As to the merits of these Skazki, they must be left to speak for themselves. It is a significant fact, however, that scholars who are equally familiar with the Russian Skazki and the German Märchen unhesitatingly give the palm, both for fun and fancy, to the former. - Summary by Robert Nisbet Bain

Genre(s): Myths, Legends & Fairy Tales

Language: English